Frequency Hopping Sequence Determination Using Inter-Pulse Interval for Human Body Interface and Control Systems

Security of human wearable and implantable devices is often discussed as a topic of concern for human body interface and control systems (HBICS). The use of physiological biometrics such as the timing between heartbeats, also known as the inter-pulse interval (IPI), has been well researched for mitigating threats to confidentiality and integrity; however, not quite so for the mitigation of threats to availability. The jamming of communication links to cause denial-of-service (DoS) is one such type of threats to availability. In this paper, we propose, simulate and analyze four alternative algorithms which use IPI to add another layer of protection to the traditional pseudorandom frequency hopping system, to mitigate jamming attacks on communication links. The results reveal the feasibility for some of the algorithms to be used. Potential improvements, such as the use of datasets with higher sampling rate, are also identified.